five minutes

I'm starting a series today of five-minute blog posts.  I'll try to post every day for a while, and you never know. It could be crap, it could be diamonds. The point is, there will be posts!

I've just looked across the street from the coffee shop where I'm sitting, and noticed that the coffee shop over there has changed hands, and has a new name. This is surprising, but a good reminder of how much I take the same pathways and roads every day. I drive on autopilot. Of course, I'm looking where I'm going, watching out for pedestrians and cars and ducks and dogs, but really, my hands just drive to car to where I'm going. To school, to work, to church.  Sometimes, I start out heading somewhere and find myself driving somewhere else completely.

When we're on autopilot, we miss out. There are advantages to letting processes become habit. We need habitual movement, or else everything would require such concentration we would be exhausted by getting out of bed, by making a cup of coffee, by brushing our teeth. Sometimes, due to illness or injury, those processes cease to be automatic, and we have to re-learn how to do what was once accomplished so easily; we have to bring our minds to the task.

It's when we pay attention to those small tasks, though, that sometimes the magic appears. It's in the midst of something ordinary that the encounter occurs that will start us on a new adventure. In our hero/ine journey, we are presented again and again with the opportunity to step into the unknown. 

Five minutes are up. I'm off to an appointment and to work. see you soon!